Colombia ex-secret service chief jailed for murder

Colombia's Supreme Court Wednesday sentenced a former secret service chief who served under ex-president Alvaro Uribe to 25 years in prison on charges including the murder of a university professor.The court declared Jorge Noguera, the former director of the DAS -- a domestic intelligence agency that reports directly to the president -- guilty of aggravated conspiracy and homicide in the death of Alfredo Correa de Andreis, a professor and activist at the Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla. Assailants aboard a motorcycle gunned down Correa and his bodyguard on September 17, 2004 in the northern Caribbean coast city.The shooters were members of the Self Defense Units of Colombia (AUC), a right-wing paramilitary group.Since the early 2000s, the DAS has been repeatedly accused of harboring paramilitary fighters in its ranks, and of illegally wiretapping the telephones of magistrates, politicians and journalists critical of Uribe. Noguera, who headed the DAS between 2002 and 2005, delivered the names of leftist activists, including Correa de Andreis, to the shooters, according to trial testimony. This is the first time that a senior official appointed by Uribe -- criticized for alleged widespread rights violations during his eight years in office -- is convicted. Reacting to the verdict on his Twitter account, Uribe said he had chosen Noguera "for his resume and his family.""I trusted him, if he committed a crime it hurts me and I ask forgiveness of the people," he wrote.The court ruled that the ex-DAS commander must also pay indemnity to the relatives of the dead men. Regional paramilitary leader Rodrigo Tovar Pupo was in May also convicted of the two murders and sentenced to 26 years in prison.The murders were the result of "a shadowy criminal alliance between members of the DAS and the AUC," the court said at the time. Correa de Andreis, a sociologist and agronomist, reportedly angered paramilitary groups because of his ties to Colombians displaced by the country's lengthy civil unrest. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court began hearing charges against the 2007-2008 head of the DAS, Maria del Pilar Hurtado, and Uribe's former presidential chief of staff, Bernardo Moreno, in a case involving illegal wiretaps.Moreno has been under preventive detention since July 30, while Hurtado fled to Panama in November 2010 seeking political asylum.